The Dead Rabbit Grocery And Grog, New York, NY, NYC, Manhattan, Downtown, Financial District, Where to drink, Where to eat, Cocktails, Irish-American, Tavern, Parlor, Sean Muldoon, Jack McGarry, Best Bars in New York, Beer, Punch, Taproom, The Grocery, Communal Punch, Small Plates, British-Irish, Where to drink in Belfast, Brooklyn, NY, Ireland, Bartender’s Recs
Bar
The Dead Rabbit
Financial District
Cocktails / Beer / Irish
30 Water Street
New York, NY
T: 646.422.7906
Website:
The Dead Rabbit | New York
March 8, 2013
Financial District - New York, NY
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Photographs courtesy of The Dead Rabbit
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Bartender’s Recs | NYC
Maison Premiere
Photograph courtesy of Maison Premiere
Bartender Jim Meehan at PDT
Photo Credit: David Engelhardt
They are trying to capture the same spirit that we are with the past. The concept is very strong and I think the guys are very true to their concept, even the way they look, the way they dress, the way their hair is brushed. When I go to that bar, I genuinely think I’m in New Orleans. They do a great job with the theme.
298 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211
T: 347.335.0446
Clover Club
Good food and consistently great and creative cocktails. If I was living in Brooklyn, it would be my go-to local bar.
210 Smith Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
T: 718.855.7939
When anyone wants to see a cocktail bar in New York, it is always the first place I will take them. People always remember this bar. I don’t know if it is the telephone booth or the hot dogs, I don’t know if it is the warm friendliness inside the place, but when we bring people here, they always have a great experience and they always remember being brought to PDT. They do a really good Negroni and I get it every time. If I’m going to have a Negroni, I’m going to have it here.
113 Saint Marks Place, New York, NY 10009
T: 212.614.0386
Employees Only
I don’t go here for cocktails, but I go for a good night out. If there was an award for best night out, Employees Only would win it.
510 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
T: 212.242.3021
Bartender’s Recs | Belfast, Ireland
White’s Tavern
Photograph courtesy of White’s Tavern
The Merchant Hotel
Photograph courtesy of The Merchant Hotel
Duke of York
It’s an Irish whisky bar with live session music. On weekends, it can be very, very busy. They have a disco-y part to it upstairs where a lot of student types go. But during the week, the downstairs bar is just a phenomenal place to hang out. They probably have 120 or 130 whiskies.
7-11 Commercial Ct, Belfast, BT1 2NB, Ireland
T:+44.28.9024.1062
http://www.facebook.com/thedukeofyork?rf=157194117662146
White’s Tavern
It’s a fantastic place and what we call a homey bar. It’s like you haven’t left your house and you’re in a comfortable living room.
2-4 Winecellar Entry, Belfast, County Antrim BT1 1QN, Ireland
T:+44.28.9024.3080
Maddens
A fantastic bar. It has one side of it that was a corner where people could only speak the Irish language. You couldn’t speak English if you sat in that corner. And I think things like that are quite good.
4 Berry Street, Belfast, BT11, Ireland
T:+44.28.9024.4114
The Merchant Hotel
It’s where I worked and it’s still the best cocktail bar in Belfast.
16 Skipper St, Belfast, County Antrim BT1 2DZ, Ireland
T:+44.28.9023.4888
www.themerchanthotel.com/index.php/the-bar-at-the-merchant-hotel.html
Kelly’s Cellars
A lot of tourist go here and it’s very popular for sure, but it’s a good Irish bar.
30-32 Bank Street, Belfast, County Antrim BT1 1HL, Ireland
T:+44.28.9024.6058
F.E.D. Recs on the Go
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Before moving to New York, Muldoon and head bartender Jack McGarry both worked at The Merchant Hotel in Belfast, which was declared World’s Best Cocktail Bar in 2010 at Tales of the Cocktail. After work at the bar, they would frequent their favorite whisky pub around the corner, called the Duke of York. “We wanted to bring an element of The Merchant and an element of our favorite bar.”
Five Points by George Catlin (1827)
The Dead Rabbit consists of two floors. The first floor is The Taproom, with sawdust-covered floors, pints of beer and a grocery. “I saw the Five Points painting and kept seeing the word ‘grocery.’ At the time, I was watching the movie ‘Gangs of New York’ for inspiration and wondered why everything had a grocery. I was reading the book ‘America Walks into a Bar’ and found out the groceries were covers for the bars and gangs. They were drinking in illegal bars that were like speakeasies hidden behind the grocery stores. They were also known as grog shops. We sell grog in punch form and we sell things like oils, tapenades and chips.”
The second floor is The Parlor where they specialize in 19th century cocktails served in period glassware. “We have 72 drinks on the menu with 12 different categories and each category has 6 drinks. For example, we have an absinthe category, because absinthe is historically accurate for the menu.” You’ll also find cobblers, slings, toddies, nogs, juleps and smashes all intended to evoke a certain era.
“A lot of cocktail bars, you have to be a particular type of person to get into them and a particular type of person to enjoy them. We wanted to create something that everyone would and could enjoy. We wanted to make a place that is approachable.”
We asked Sean Muldoon where he’s been drinking in New York City and to pass along his favorite Belfast bars.
When Sean Muldoon was getting ready to name his new Financial District pub The Dead Rabbit, the Irish bartender says he learned in America a dead rabbit was a reference to the result of a pregnancy test. “That isn’t what it’s named after. We took the name from a gang that was in New York.”
The newly opened Dead Rabbit Grocery and Grog borrows its inspiration from the Lower Manhattan bars of the mid-1800s and the cocktail clubs that were opening up in the Flatiron District during the same time. “For me, it had to make historical sense. I knew there was a big Irish thing happening in New York, with Irish immigrants coming in through the South Street Seaport and I wanted to bring it together with the cocktail thing that was also happening.”
